Pan Africanism : American Abolitionist WERE NOT freedom fighter for continental E. Africans

[dustyelbow]

I got this off another group

For more detail get co-author Anne Farrow book Complicity.

I recently saw a television program about this author and this is what she said based on how fast I can write.


Before the railroad was utilized in the Western world, 1850, some technological innovations were made such as the "wind saw" which helped shape a hideous demand in East Africa for elephant tusks which the European calls "ivory." Ivory was used before this point for making combs. But that ugly middle class "must have" changed all this with the "piano". This all started in a small New England town in Connecticut .

Just a sum of what I got from the Internet

Conn. town preserves a history built on ivory

ESSEX, Conn. -- It has been called the best small town in America, but there is a dark -- and fascinating -- chapter in this town's otherwise proud history. For almost 100 years, starting in 1850, 90 percent of all the ivory imported to the United States from Africa was shipped to a village of Essex that came to be known as Ivoryton or to nearby Deep River.

The trade involved the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of elephants and altered the course of evolution. Mature elephants with the largest tusks were the first to be killed, leaving behind immature elephants with a smaller chance of survival and smaller-tusked elephants to reproduce. Native Africans carried the 100-plus-pound tusks by hand to ports; thousands died or were sold into slavery along the way.

The primary destination was Comstock, Cheney & Co., a large mill complex on the Falls River. Essex had built a reputation as a manufacturer of buttons and combs made from bones and bovine horns. It had deep-port access to the ocean and water power from the Falls. And in 1799 Phineas Pratt had patented a machine to cut comb teeth, streamlining a laborious process that had been done by hand.

Add the Victorian Age requirement that every young lady learn to play piano, and the stage was set for the large-scale manufacture of ivory piano keys and actions, along with combs, billiard balls, knitting needles, and toothpicks. In its heyday, Comstock, Cheney & Co. employed about 1,000 people. It created the quintessential factory town with a school, library, company store, social hall, and housing appropriate to the status of its employees.

Now, she said at least 2 million captured continental Africans died for elephant tusk demand. Captured continental Africans were taken from their villages forcefully to supply middle class Victorain America and European wanting to play a tune on the piano. Captured continent Africans had to endure a walk of 700 to 800 miles with huge payloads to the coast of East Africa and Zanzibar. Many did not make it and died. Those that did survive, DID NOT GET ANY BREAKS, and was sold to the Middle East and India to work on tea, spice, and other plantations. She also noted that David Livingston knew what was going on and DID NOTHING.

At this time in America the abolitionist movement was in full steam. New England states such a Connecticut was abolitionist hotbed to halt slavery in the south. These same white abolitionist were thourougly invovled with the ivory piano trade. Even one of the top abolitionist said,

The State That Slavery Built: An Introduction

Up to the edge of the 20th century, two towns on the Connecticut River were a national center for ivory production, milling hundreds of thousands of tons of elephant tusks procured through the enslavement or death of more than a million people, in Africa.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hartford's most famous abolitionist, said this was slavery the way Northerners like it:

All of the benefits and none of the screams.

In all she states something like "Abolisitionist had no conscience of continental captured African people to supplying ivory to the East coast of Africa for pianos."


There is more but relegated to the North and Northern states of the US. I just want to say that this is a very important piece for Africa. And should be added to this fine history collection here.


More to come.